In large institutional settings such as hospitals, the dispensing and delivery of drugs has become a time consuming process. In particular, sterile items, controlled medications, biological samples, and the like need to be prepared and transported in a secure environment while ensuring the safety of patients and hospital workers.
Transporting objects via pneumatic tubes is known to the art. Pneumatic delivery systems are used extensively for the rapid and efficient transportation of a wide variety of articles. These delivery systems are used in a number of business operations, including, but not limited to, banks, hospitals, office buildings, industrial plants, and transportation terminals.
To send a payload in a carrier, an object is placed within a carrier which is then transported within enclosed pneumatic tubing by air under either positive or negative pressure to a desired destination. The interior of the closed tube and the outer dimension of the carrier form a seal so that the carrier can be propelled between the destinations by a vacuum or positive air pressure.
One specific area of commerce which currently uses the pneumatic tube for transporting materials is the hospital or biomedical research/manufacturing industry. Pneumatic tube delivery systems have proven to be particularly useful for transporting blood samples, medicines, intravenous bags, viral samples or other biological or chemical matter within hospitals or laboratories. Some of the payloads transported may be highly addictive drugs (i.e. morphine) which need to be tightly controlled.
Many hospitals utilize color-coded carriers for department-specific use. For example, carriers used in a pharmacy can be yellow, carriers used in a laboratory can be purple, carriers used in the emergency room can be red, carriers used in the X-ray department can be green, and carriers used in billing can be blue. However, these carriers are not automatically routed to the departments according to their color. In a multi department pneumatic tube delivery system there is currently nothing to ensure that the carriers return to the appropriate departments.
Thus, there is clearly a need for a system providing a secure pneumatic tube carrier delivery. Also, a need exists for a system providing routing of carriers in a pneumatic tube system to ensure the secure delivery of carrier contents to authorized departments and end users.
According to the present principles there is provided a pneumatic tube carrier system for routing and tracking carriers in a pneumatic tube system comprising a pneumatic tube system, a connecting diverter with blower, and storage piping with diverters, sending and receiving stations, a system control module, and sensors, such as a color sensor. The system uses the color sensor to automatically route the color-coded carriers to dedicated receiving stations using color identifiers. The system may also comprise identifying tag readers configured to read identifying tags. The color sensor, identifying tag readers, and system control together provide an efficient and secure method and system of routing and tracking carriers and carrier contents throughout the pneumatic tube system.